Will new plan turn Osoyoos east into Kelowna South?
Osoyoos councillor Tom Shields wants the town of Osoyoos to adopt a transportation plan that will keep us forever looking like Osoyoos and not like Kelowna South.rnIn August of 2004, The Osoyoos Indian Band, the Town of Osoyoos and the Ministry of Transportation commissioned a traffic study to examine solutions to some issues of concern on Osoyoos' east side. Highway congestion, safety and the area's street network were all included as components of the study.
The Town of Osoyoos will soon reveal the results of the study, or transportation review, and the Osoyoos Times contacted Shields for his opinions as the only councillor from the east side of Osoyoos.
Shields said he believes that some of the proposed highway changes will be catastrophic.
Shields has serious concerns over the plans he has seen so far. Some of the changes, Shields believes, would change the entire face of eastside Osoyoos at a cost to taxpayers in the multi-millions of dollars.
And the first troubling fact, according to Shields, was that an engineer out of Kamloops, along with a highways person out of Kelowna/Penticton were doing the study.
What concerned me as well, was that nobody locally had been talked to, Shields said.
Some of the likely changes will be positive and will make sense, particularly the intersection of Cottonwood Drive and Highway 3/Main Street, which will be reconstructed to include turning lanes and lights.
The highway plan is not too bad and I think that everybody can live with it. But what they want to do is change a lot of everything else, which I don't think is necessary.
And in changing things, I'm afraid we're going to look like Kelowna South, Shields said.
Shields sees a much simpler plan that would cost taxpayers significantly less because much of the highway improvement costs would be borne by the developers.
Many of the highway changes in the plans Shields has seen would see new roads carved into the east side, see significant amounts of property acquisition, and see commercial traffic flow through residential areas, a move Shields feels will be very unpopular with eastside residents.
Shields understands how fast Osoyoos is growing and wants to see town planning managed in such a way as it will not be a case of too much, too soon.
For every large piece of property for sale that can be built on between Vaseux Lake and the border, someone is standing in line to buy it.
And if you tell them they can build, they're coming in now. Many want big condos – why? Because they can come in and make a whack of money right here.
People are now selling in Vancouver and all over the place to come here, Shields said.
Shields believes we have a choice right now to determine Osoyoos' future.
We can go this route, and as soon as we say we're adopting this plan it will start happening much faster than anybody ever wanted it to happen, and at the same time, totally disturb the ambiance of this entire area.
The other way is, we can grow at a normal fashion, at our pace, keeping the Osoyoos ambiance, and at a price we can afford.
What we need to do is accommodate growth in such a way the public can accept it.
Whose plan do you think is going to sell to the public? Shields asked.
